Skip to main content

National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis

Search Results

2041-2050 of 6248
  1. Publication

    The sound of logging: Tropical forest soundscape before, during, and after selective timber extraction

    Over half of the world's tropical forests are used for timber extraction by selective logging. Even though these forests are degraded to a variable degree, they are still important for tropical forest biodiversity. It is not yet known how biodiversity is impacted during and immediately after logging, and how fast it recovers. Here, we use ecoacoustics, and specifically the recording and analysis of soundscape dawn time series, to monitor the immediate impact and early recovery of biodiversity after selective logging.

  2. Publication

    Opinion: Time to rethink trophic levels in aquaculture policy

    Aquaculture policy often promotes production of low-trophic level species for sustain-able industry growth. Yet, the application of the trophic level concept to aquaculture is complex, and its value for assessing sustainability is further complicated by continual reformulation of feeds. The majority of fed farmed fish and invertebrate species are produced using human-made compound feeds that can differ markedly from the diet of the same species in the wild and continue to change in composition.

  3. Publication

    General destabilizing effects of eutrophication ongrassland productivity at multiple spatial scales

    Eutrophication is a widespread environmental change that usually reduces the stabilizing effect of plant diversity on productivity in local communities. Whether this effect is scale dependent remains to be elucidated.

  4. Publication

    Set ambitious goals for biodiversity and sustainability

    Global biodiversity policy is at a crossroads. Recent global assessments of living nature (1, 2) and climate (3) show worsening trends and a rapidly narrowing window for action. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has recently announced that none of the 20 Aichi targets for biodiversity it set in 2010 has been reached and only six have been partially achieved (4).

  5. Publication

    Soil organic carbon is not just for soil scientists: measurement recommendations for diverse practitioners

    Soil organic carbon (SOC) regulates terrestrial ecosystem functioning, provides diverse energy sources for soil microorganisms, governs soil structure, and regulates the availability of organically‐bound nutrients. Investigators in increasingly diverse disciplines recognize how quantifying SOC attributes can provide insight about ecological states and processes. Today, multiple research networks collect and provide SOC data, and robust, new technologies are available for managing, sharing, and analyzing large data sets.

  6. Publication

    Improving rural health care reduces illegal logging and conserves carbon in a tropical forest

    Tropical forest loss currently exceeds forest gain, leading to a net greenhouse gas emission that exacerbates global climate change. This has sparked scientific debate on how to achieve natural climate solutions. Central to this debate is whether sustainably managing forests and protected areas will deliver global climate mitigation benefits, while ensuring local peoples’ health and well-being.

  7. Publication

    Novel Insights to Be Gained From Applying Metacommunity Theory to Long-Term, Spatially Replicated Biodiversity Data

    Global loss of biodiversity and its associated ecosystem services is occurring at an alarming rate and is predicted to accelerate in the future. Metacommunity theory provides a framework to investigate multi-scale processes that drive change in biodiversity across space and time. Short-term ecological studies across space have progressed our understanding of biodiversity through a metacommunity lens, however, such snapshots in time have been limited in their ability to explain which processes, at which scales, generate observed spatial patterns.

  8. Publication

    Too much of a good thing: shrub benefactors are less important in higher diversity arid ecosystems

    The biodiversity ecosystem function literature provides a useful framework to examine many processes associated with species diversity in ecology.

  9. Publication

    Coupled beta diversity patterns among coral reef benthic taxa

    Unraveling the processes that drive diversity patterns remains a central challenge for ecology, and an increased understanding is especially urgent to address and mitigate escalating diversity loss. Studies have primarily focused on singular taxonomic groups, but recent research has begun evaluating spatial diversity patterns across multiple taxonomic groups and suggests taxa may have congruence in their diversity patterns.

  10. Publication

    The soundscape of the Anthropocene ocean

    Oceans have become substantially noisier since the Industrial Revolution. Shipping, resource exploration, and infrastructure development have increased the anthrophony (sounds generated by human activities), whereas the biophony (sounds of biological origin) has been reduced by hunting, fishing, and habitat degradation. Climate change is affecting geophony (abiotic, natural sounds). Existing evidence shows that anthrophony affects marine animals at multiple levels, including their behavior, physiology, and, in extreme cases, survival.